Expelled Russians arrive home as Moscow warns against travel to UK

Expelled Russians arrive home as Moscow warns against travel to UK

MOSCOW

Russian diplomats expelled from the United States arrived in Moscow on April 1, with post-Cold War tensions peaking in the wake of a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain.

A deepening crisis in ties between Russia and the West has over the past weeks seen the biggest wave of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions in recent memory.

In further signs of tension, Russia warned its nationals on March 31 to think twice before travelling to Britain, where it said they could be singled out for harassment by local authorities.

By expelling 60 Russian diplomats, the U.S. joined a score of Britain’s allies in responding to the poisoning of former double agent SergeiSkripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Two planes arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on April 1, bringing home a total of 171 people -- the 60 diplomats and their families -- from Washington and New York.

Russian television showed passengers disembarking from a government plane while several buses waited to pick them up.

More than 150 Russian diplomats have now been ordered out of the U.S., EU members, NATO countries and other nations.

Britain has said it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the Skripal attack using the Soviet-designed Novichok nerve agent.

Moscow also closed a British consulate in Saint Petersburg and suspended all projects of the British Council for the first time in nearly 60 years.

The Russian embassy in London urged Russians to think carefully before travelling to the U.K. or sending children to summer school there.

The embassy warned that British authorities including police could single out Russians for additional checks, citing “the anti-Russian policies and an escalation of the British side’s threatening rhetoric.”